Puputuubi @suolakurkkutulehdus - Tumblr Blog

one day i'm going to make a post explaining how to use early modern english to y'all because i have seen too many people 1) calling it old english, and 2) wildly missing the mark with a Lot of confidence (to the point that someone took a pen and changed "shall" to "shalt" on a sign in a bookstore, which made it the incorrect conjugation of the verb for given subject!)

puckgoodfaggot

actually that day is today, with the caveat that i am not a linguist. i'm just an early modernist (specialized in english drama). and this is not an exhaustive course in early modern english! it is a bare bones intro to the basics. if you want to know more, read early modern works or do some googling.

what kind of english is that? let's look at some famous examples of each.

Hwæt. We Gardena in geardagum, / þeodcyninga, þrym gefrunon, / hu ða æþelingas ellen fremedon. <- this is old english. note that it is unintelligible to a modern english speaker. (excerpt from beowulf)

Whan zephirus eek with his sweete breeth / Inspired hath in every holt and heeth / Tendre croppes, and the yonge sonne / Hath in the ram his halve cours yronne … <- this is middle english. it is more intelligible, but it’s still very different from what we speak now. (excerpt from the canterbury tales)

Is this a dagger which I see before me, / The handle toward my hand? Come, let me clutch thee. / I have thee not, and yet I see thee still. / Art thou not, fatal vision, sensible / To feeling as to sight? <- this is early modern english. this is so intelligible that we trust teenagers to read it in school. (excerpt from macbeth)

the english you are using to give a post a medieval or renaissance/shakespearean vibe is early modern english, not old english. (it's fine that you're using early modern english for a medieval vibe; no one expects you to learn middle english for a silly post about knights.)

how do you use pronouns?

'thou' is the informal second-person singular pronoun.

thou/thee/thy/thine

thou is the nominative form. you can use it for the subject of a sentence -> thou knowest me.

thee is the oblique form. you can use it for the object of a sentence -> i know thee.

thy and thine are the genitive forms. you can use them as possessive adjectives for nouns starting with consonants and vowels respectively. -> thy leg is broken. thine arm is broken too.

thine is also the possessive form. think about it like the word 'mine'*. -> my heart was once thine.

*'mine' is also used like thine as a possessive adjective in early modern english; you would say 'mine art' instead of 'my art'

ye and you

originally, 'ye' was the formal or plural nominitive second-person pronoun, and 'you' was the oblique form. so, it would be 'ye know me' and 'i know you'. 'ye' fell out of use and was replaced by 'you'. at that point it was already used as singular. but it was still much more formal than 'thou'.

the 'ye' you see in 'ye olde shoppe' stuff is not this pronoun. it is the way that printers who no longer had a thorn (þ) wrote the word 'the' (previously 'þe'). the 'y' in certain typefaces looked like a thorn, so we got 'ye' for 'the'.

how do you conjugate a verb?

you can't just slap a -th or -st onto the end of any verb. those are for specific conjugations. phrases like "i hath noticed" or "he thinkest that" are not grammatically sound. it's like saying "i has noticed" or "he think that".

the -st or -est ending is for (most) present and past tense verbs conjugated with 'thou'

some examples: thou canst, thou couldst, thou sayest, thou goest, thou wentest, thou hast, thou hadst, thou dost (or doest).

'thou' also has a few irregulars. some examples: thou wilt, thou art and thou wast (for 'to be'), thou shalt.

the -th or -eth ending is for (most) present and past tense conjugated with 'he', 'she', or 'it'

some examples: he hath, she sayeth, it doth, he goeth, she thinketh, it moveth

there are, of course, irregulars. the most important one is 'to be', which conjugates the same for this set as it does in modern english.

note: not every verb conjugates this way. for example, past tense verbs might use auxiliary verbs. so, not 'she cookedeth', but 'she did cook'.

by and large, the 'i', 'we', 'you' (or 'ye'), and 'they' conjugations were the same as they are today.

there were also some verbs that were used differently than we use them today, though (some of these fell out of use over the early modern period):

to be -> sometimes this verb is used instead of 'to have' as the auxiliary verb. 'i am arrived' means 'i have arrived', and 'she is come to see thee' means 'she has come to see you'.

to do -> sometimes this is used for the present progressive (i think that's the right name for it). 'he does speak' means 'he is speaking', and 'i do write' means 'i am writing'.

would -> this can be used to express a desire. 'i would i were a bird' means 'i wish i were a bird'

must -> this can be used without 'go' to mean 'must go'. 'i must to england' means 'i must go to england'

will -> this can be used without 'have' to mean 'will have'. 'you'll none of that' means 'you will have none of that'

there are a million other things i'm not covering, like different sentence structures for questions ('thinkest thou...?' as a valid alternative to 'dost thou think...?'), and different contractions ('she'll not' rather than 'she won't') but this post is long as fuck and i have things to do! enjoy! linguists, feel free to correct me on what name of tenses or declensions or whatever i have mixed up.

(psa: the point of this is not to be a kill-joy about other people's posts that have these errors. it's just a little knowledge sharing.)

puckgoodfaggot

wait, important additions:

'wherefore' = 'why', not 'where'. think about it pairing with 'therefore'. an example of the two in use:

'my love, wherefore didst thou pretend to see me not?' [babe, why did you pretend not to see me?]

'thy father, from whom we do keep our love hidden, did at that moment walk nearby. therefore i turned from thee that he might not espy us together' [we're keeping our relationship secret from your dad and he was walking by. i did it so he wouldn't see us together.]

'hither' = 'to here', not 'here'. there's a whole set of these, actually. 'whither' = 'to where' and 'thither' = 'to there'. these pair with 'hence' ('from here'), 'whence' ('from where'), and 'thence' ('from there'). an example of some of these in use:

'whence came you?' [where did you come from?]

(pointing to the left) 'thence came i hither.' [i came here from there.]

'and whither go you now?' [and where are you going now?]

(pointing to the right) 'my lord calls me thither.' [my boss is calling me over there]

'very well. get you hence.' [alright, get away from here.]

'whom' ≠ fancy 'who' and this one is just also true today.

'whom' works for the object of a sentence. 'who' is for the subject. in other words, 'whom' receives the action and 'who' does the action.

'whom wrote that letter to you?' -> incorrect! this should be 'who wrote that letter to you?' because 'who' is doing the action.

'whom did you write that letter to?' (or even better, 'to whom did you write that letter?') -> correct! 'whom' here is receiving the action.

okay bye again

#kielinördäys

jotainjotain-muuta

Kai kaikki tietää suomen kielen parhaan palindromin?

En jaksa, pillu kakka kulli paska jne.

#suomen kieli #kaunista

overdose-art

Eero Järnefelt (1863- 1937), Sunset over a Lake, 1894.

#taidetta #ihq

random-brushstrokes

Pekka Halonen (Finnish, 1865-1933)

#taidetta #talvi #ihq

escuerzoresucitado

misanthropemom

Masterclass in darning

alexaloraetheris

This is quantum physics in theory (incomprehensible unless you're a hardore math simp) but in practice it is Black Magic (you have to sell your soul and sabity in order to perform it).

otto-von-stirlitz

btw @ everyone who can't wrap their heads around this, here's a longer video going into more detail about prepping the damaged area and mending/darning technique with actual explanations!

sarahthecoat

rb with this more detailed method which will make a more lasting mend.

#käsityöt #hyödyllistä

inthetags

Reblog and put in the tags the book that is physically nearest to you at this moment.

#Babel (R.F. Kuang)#kirjat

okayyoureacab

Hexagon Quilt

rumade

This is the second time I've seen a video of this technique and this explanation is so clear! It does use more fabric than English paper piecing (EPP) but you end up with a double sided hexagon so don't have to source fabric for the backing.

I'm doing EPP at the moment but I have a hole punch to make the papers and just use leaflets and junk mail, so it doesn't feel wasteful. I don't think it's difficult either- in the video she mentions it's not for beginners, but I don't have that much experience with hand sewing or EPP and I've been finding it pretty easy so YMMV

lindstromm

I saw this video yesterday and was seized with the need to try it out immediately. Lookit my cute lil' hexagon baby!!

Here is what the backside looks like. OP notes this takes more fabric than paper piecing, but that excess fabric makes it already triple-layered. Besides not needing backing fabric, I don't think you'd need batting for this quilt at all. It's already thick and soft just from folding all that fabric into a hexagon.

lannamichaels

Hexagon quilt tutorial video by tiktok user camelscrafts. Method:

Each hexagon begins as a 6" circle. camelscrafts does this by creating a paper template using a compass. According to the video, a 6" circle will create a hexagon that is 2.5 inches tall.

These hexagons are hand-sewn. Thread the needle.

With the fabric right side facing, find the center of the circle by folding it in half right sides together, then folding it in half again (wrong sides are facing). The top of the triangle shape is the center of the fabric circle.

Make a small stitch into the center of the fabric. The wrong side is still facing.

Unfold the circle. There will be a small stitch in the center.

Now the hexagon is created by folding the circle into itself: Take the needle to one of the edges of the fabric (it doesn't matter which one). Pull the needle through and pull the thread tight. This will fold down the fabric and create an edge of the hexagon. Crease the fold with your finger.

This fold has two corners, one at the top and one at the bottom. Put the needle into one of the corners and pull the thread taut. This will create another fold.

Continue this going around the circle until all of it is folded down, creating the hexagon. camelscrafts notes that the last corner pulled in may be a little bit "wonky" (no precise point in the corner) if the corners were not done precisely. However, that corner is pulled into the back, so is not visible from the front.

The hexagon is now formed. Sew around the folds in the middle of the circle to hold the folds in place. Tie off and cut the thread.

Attach hexagons to each other along the sides. With right sides together, whip stitch the sides together.

#käsityöt #hyödyllistä

bloodborzoi

maat: myyty

hanskat: tiskissä

pyyhe: kehässä

suru: puserossa

mieli: maassa

kyynel: silmässä

periksi: annettu

varahai

kirves: kaivossa

karvoja

lusikka: nurkassa

monni-monni

muumit: laaksossa

kissa: pöydällä

lehmä: ojassa

piru: merrassa

kevytmaitohorsma

itku: markkinoilla

maito: maassa

matti: kukkarossa

kiiski: vastarannalla

sapelihammaskeiju

susi: siunaamassa

paska: tuulettimessa

returquoise

mummo: lumessa

marjat: paskassa

levällään: Jokisen eväät

hehkuvamyyhapero

kanat: ellun

suolakurkkutulehdus

pieru: Saharassa

herne: nenässä

#suomipaskaa #suomen kieli

alttaritar

Adressi:

Epäluottamuslause: Orpon hallituksen on erottava - Orpos regering måste avgå!

Lainattu teksti:

Suomessa hallitusvaltaa käyttävät tasavallan presidentti sekä hallitus. Molempien tulee nauttia eduskunnan luottamusta. Koska ei ole olemassa virallista väylää tai lainsäädäntöä, joka antaisi kansalaisille mahdollisuuden nostaa ongelmat tai rikotut vaalilupaukset esille kesken hallituskauden esitämme tässä parhaamme mukaan epäluottamuslauseen Orpon hallitusta kohtaan.

Vaadimme hallituksen purkamista ja uusien vaalien järjestämistä!

Tämän hetken poliittinen ilmapiiri perustuu liikaa katteettomille lupauksille ja välillä jopa räikeälle valehtelulle vaalikampanjoinnin aikana, ilman mitään takeita äänestäjille siitä että noista lupauksista tai mistään sanotusta tarvitsisi pitää kiinni.

Suomen istuvalta hallitukselta ei löydy johtajuutta, vastuunkantoa eikä asioiden tiedottamista oikea-aikaisesti tai luotettavasti. Orpon hallituksen pääpaino on selkeästi ajaa pikavauhdilla elinkeinoelämää koskevat, työntekijöiden turvaa heikentävät lainsäädännöt läpi ennen kuin jo valmiiksi horjuva hallitus kaatuu. Tämän varjolla tunnutaan hyväksyttävän myös epäeettistä sekä epäammattimaista käytöstä ja jopa fasististen ääriliikkeiden kytköksiä ministeriössä istuvien toimesta, asemissa joihin Suomen perustuslain mukaan pitäisi hyväksyä vain rehellisiksi ja taitaviksi tunnettuja henkilöitä.

Nyt vallitseva, voimalla eteenpäin ajettava politiikka tulee lisäämään taloudellista epäoikeudenmukaisuutta, kasvattaa tuloeroja, syventää köyhyyttä ja tulee lisäämään näillä toimilla myös kansalaisten terveys- sekä mielenterveysongelmia entisestään. Ostovoiman heikkenemisen kiihdyttämisen luulisi olevan jopa oikeistohallituksen arvojen vastaista.

Koska nykyinen hallitus ei selvästi aja tällä hetkellä yleisesti Suomen kaikkien kansalaisten etua ja asioiden hoitamista, vaan toimii hyvinvointivaltiota hajottavalla tavalla, ilmaisemme täten epäluottamuslauseen hallitusta kohtaan.

Hallituksen on erottava ja uudet vaalit järjestettävä!

Adressin ovat allekirjoittaneet kansalaiset ja muut hallituksen toimista kärsivät suomalaiset.

#politiikka

nyanpasuuna

Visit Original Link

tää on häirinny mua vuosia mun pään sisällä ja päätin siksi tehdä siitä nyt kaikkien teidänkin ongelman

#muumit

greaseonmymouth

Finnish Grammar Gothic

- There are 14, 15 or 16 cases, depending on who you ask. One might be accusative. Accusative may not exist at all. It depends on who you ask. Who do you ask? You don’t know who to ask. You can ask nobody. The accusative case stares at you, accusingly.

- Imperative exists in three persons. Which three persons, you ask. Plural, they reply. Don’t forget the plural imperative. You stare at your textbook. Your textbook stares back at you. The negative active 2. person imperative has ceased to make any sense. Has it ever made sense?

- You’re learning the difference between the short and the long vowels. The short vowels are short. The long ones are twice as long as the short ones. But really, they say, they’re thrice as long as that. Even longer than that. Ä, you say. Ää. Äää. Äääääääääää- It never stops.

- The verb types are easy, they say. There are only six verb types. Six. Your text book lists only five. What is the sixth verb type? It’s in the next book, your professor says. There is no next book. What is the sixth verb type?

- The vowels come in groups. You don’t know why they’ve come or why they’re in groups. You learn their harmony all the same. You shed a tear when you’ve mastered it. But have you mastered it? The vowel harmony lulls you into a false sense of security. The vowels will strike when you least expect it.

- Consonant gradation.

- There is no accusative, your professor screams at you. It’s genitive! Or partitive! Or plural nominative, but only in the personal pronouns! The accusative does not exist! He is red in the face. Why does the accusative not exist? Do grammatical objects not exist in this language? you ask. (You shouldn’t have asked.) You are met with blank stares.

- In the future you would like to speak Finnish fluently. You make the mistake of saying this aloud. The ground opens beneath your feet and a terrible voice booms: THERE IS NO FUTURE! Silly you, you think. Of course there isn’t. You dutifully note down the three different past tenses.

- Sentence replacements replace sentences, your professor tells you. He does not tell you what the sentences are replaced with. You stare at the list of sentence replacements. There are nine items on the list. One is a quantum sentence replacement. You dare not ask.

- New words are easy to create, they say. So easy. What could possibly go wrong? You decide to create a new word. You have created an abomination.

- You’re conjugating -i nouns. There’s another group of -i nouns conjugated differently. These are very old words, your professor says. There’s another group of -i nouns. These are very old words, she says. Even older words. There’s another group of -i nouns. These are very old words, she says. They are ancient words. Blood and devil words, the past whispers in your ear.

- Some of those 14 or 15 or 16 cases are fossilised, so don’t worry about them, your professor says. Don’t worry at all. But you worry. You must worry.

- You watch a video on facebook. The Most Important Word In Finnish, it’s called. It becomes clear that it is possible to carry entire conversations using only this one word. Your smile stiffens on your face. There is only one word. There has only ever been one word.

indarye

jumalauta i’ve had so many finnish teachers but yet to meet the one who’d dare to question the existence of the accusative.

greaseonmymouth

my first Finnish professor brought it up offhandedly but didn’t go into too much detail about it, and my second Finnish professor stuck to the existence of accusative. 😅 I’m not entirely sure why tbh but she once said that because x case was no longer productive it was really a case anymore, and that’s exactly the argument *I* use to justify that accusative doesn’t exist - even if it did, once, and had endings that look interchangeable with, other case endings, a) the personal pronouns are fixed and don’t get conjugated the same way other nouns do, so they’re “exempt” from the general rules b) “accusative case endings” can be explained with properties of other case endings and their grammatical function, e.g. the difference in meaning when an object has a genitive case ending to partitive case ending (luen kirjan vs luen kirjaa), c) the main reason why accusative exists in Finnish is because Swedish and German linguists said so in the 19th century, and since accusative is very much the object case in Germanic (and Romance? idk) languages, it’s understandable that they went looking for it, found a mess, and declared it so, instead of considering that maybe the Finnish object behaves differently and that there’s no use for accusative in the “traditional” sense. there’s a history of early non-finnic/samic/Uralic linguists forcing those languages into boxes, something that has severely affected both how those languages are taught in their own communities and further linguistic research in them. A lot of that damage still hasn’t been undone.

#suomen kieli #kielinördäys

sysirauta

Mun vanhin ja toinen suosikkipropaganda kaikille (Ukrainan tukemisen lisäks) on että luovuttakaa verta (jos ei joku terveysseikka tai väliaikainen karenssi sitä estä). Varsinkin nyt lenssukautena monen veren määrä on huolestuttavan alhaalla, kävin tänään itte taas kerran ku satuin olemaan terve ja karenssi edellisen käynnin jälkeen oli loppu.

Verta luovuttaa edelleen vaan 3% ihmisistä mikä on aika vähän ja harmillisen monen syy on vaan että ei saa aikaseks. Vaihtoehtoisesti neulapelko, mut moni pelkotyyppi lähtee silti urheasti luovuttamaan (verta) ja voittamaan pelkonsa. Mukaan voi ottaa sen kaverin/siipan/sukulaisen henkiseksi tueksi, eikä sitä neulaa tartte katsoa koko operaation aikana. Ensiluovuttajia kohdellaan erityisen hyvin ja palkkioksi saa kehuja ja sälää ja ennen kaikkea hyvän mielen arvokkaasta työstä. Lisäks saa aina jonkinsortin juomaa ja ruokaa niin paljon ku haluaa ja luvan (lue, pakon) ottaa loppupäivä rennosti.

Mä en oo aina paras kannustaja koska se tuppaa menemään siihen uhkailu/kiristysmoodiin lahjonnan/kannustuksen sijaan, että 'nyt perkele sinne piikitettäväksi tai muuten...!' mutta onneks en oo minä Veripalvelulla töissä. :v Siellä ihmiset osaa asiansa. Eikä ota veriä ellet itse halua. Ne on kilttejä, minä en.

Mutta niinku. Luovuttakaa elämässä joskus luvan kanssa (verta). Se on tärkeää koska se pelastaa henkiä hyvin pienellä vaivalla. Siinä vielä linkki Veripalvelun sivuille jos alkoi kiinnostamaan tai tämä auttoi muistamaan että ainiijoo tätäkin vois harrastaa. 🩸🩸🩸

sysirauta

Reilu pari kuukautta kerkes kulua niin taas sitä mentiin perjantaina.🩸

#verenluovutus #minua on jopa auttanut pääsemään neulapelosta eroon kun olen säännöllisesti käynyt

all-pacas

do you ever find something that is so funny and you want to share it with everyone but it also requires 18 layers of context spanning things like. 90s anime. aviation history. europop. canada. in order to even remotely understand why it is so funny

all-pacas

in the late 90s there was an anime called initial d which was all about street racing and drifting. naturally every single drift was played for great drama and excitement.

in 1999, an italian named giancarlo pasquini released a europop song under the alias dave rogers called Deja Vu. this song was picked up as the theme song for the above anime. it in turn became a meme, a shorthand for drifting and Cool Moves as a concept.

in 1983, air canada flight 143, a full sized 767, ran out of fuel halfway to edmonton, alberta. this is not something you want to have happen to a huge airplane. the flight chose to try and make an emergency landing at a nearby decomissioned airforce base (as they were falling fast and could not make it to a proper airport), where they ran into a second problem: they were falling out of the sky at 500 feet per mile, but reached gimli (the base in question) while still too high to safely land. normally a plane would just do a big loop-de-loop to lose altitude, but they had maybe three minutes of airtime left before they hit the ground: not enough time to make any kind of circle. the pilot, therefore, decided to execute a side slip to lose speed and altitude. this is Not a move you want to do with a massive 767, because airplanes are not built for that and if you screw it up that plane is hitting the ground at a high speed at a weird angle and breaking into a million pieces. nevertheless, the captain tried it... and succeeded. the plane landed perfectly, and there were no major injuries! (a couple of people did get minor injuries when evacuating the plane after.) he did it so well, in fact, that the plane was refueled, flown out of gimli a couple days later, and continued to fly for another 20 years with the nickname "Gimli Glider."

what is a side-slip, you ask?

it's drifting.

the guy goddamn drifted his 767.

in 2008, the tv show Mayday: Air Disaster featured the gimli glider with full reenactments as an episode on season five of their show.

and so, in conclusion, the thing i have been giggling to myself about all weekend:

all-pacas

this is somehow starting to make the rounds so because i am a pedant i am going to take this time to talk a little more in depth about air canada 143, the GIMLI GLIDER

so you may be wondering: how the hell does a 737 (capacity of roughly 100-120 people) run out of fuel midair? the METRIC SYSTEM, that's how!

up until the early eighties, airplanes would have three people in the cockpit: the pilot, first officer, and flight engineer. generally speaking, the pilot's job is to fly the airplane; the first officer's job is to provide support, monitor instruments, and assist (the pilot and FO will swap roles periodically), and the flight engineer's job was to watch over all the fuel gauges, electrical systems, hydraulics, etc., to make sure they were all working properly, as well as taking charge of things like "setting engine power."

however, in the early 1980s -- when this story takes place -- the flight engineer role began to be made obsolete as computers and more advanced systems became capable of doing most of that work. the boeing 737 of this story was one such plane: actually, air canada 143 was quite a new airplane at the time of the accident, and had no flight engineer.

also in the early 1980s? canada was making the switch from the imperial system to metric.

neither of these things is bad in and of themselves. but put together? one of the flight engineer's jobs was to monitor fuel; it hadn't yet been made clear whose job it was now. canada, at the time, was doing refuelling in a convoluted "the fuel is weighed in pounds but put into the plane as liters" system that required Math and Conversion.

let's talk about AIRPLANE FUEL. unlike a car, you don't take your airplane to the station and fill 'er up: fuel has weight, and airplanes care a LOT about weight. way more than you'd imagine. it's the pilot's job to therefore calculate a) how much fuel they need to get from A to B b) how much extra/emergency fuel they need for safety and c) if and when they need to refuel and by how much. is there bad weather in the area? where's the nearest backup airport? if i need Ten Fuels to get to alberta and there's storms in alberta, i need another Two Fuels to circle around and kill time before landing safely, plus another Five Fuels to get to calgary in case alberta is impossible. my airplane is fully loaded, which means it's heavier than usual, so needs another One Fuel for takeoff power. so altogether i need Eighteen Fuels. except i'm in canada in the 1980s so now i need to figure out what that is in liters, and this used to be the flight engineer's job, and idk man. maybe it's 5 liters? that sounds right?

...you see the issue. it isn't that anyone was slacking off, but no one was quite sure what the conversion was, and so instead of giving the soon-to-be Gimli Glider 18 Fuels, they took off in that fucker with nowhere near enough fuel. to make things worse, the plane had a broken fuel gauge, which was a whole other thing and series of comical misunderstandings, but basically it meant that not only was there No Fuel, but the fuel gauges looked something like this:

the very-soon-to-be crashed airplane's day started off normally. they did a little hour long flight from one city to another with no issues. because they knew the fuel gauges were being silly, while on the ground they did a "stick test", which i'm imagining involved a tree branch, basically checking that yep, there was fuel in the tanks, we're good! (in actuality, what it was doing was measuring the weight of the fuel. except, again, they had their maths all backwards, so due to this convoluted conversion process they went "our fuel weighs 5 kilograms, which equals 20 pounds, which equals 18 fuels, which equals 900 liters." just. silly math. i don't want to make these guys out to be idiots: they would obviously have never flown the plane if they had realized their mistake. but the other problem was of course that the process was already convoluted and required multiple conversions; imagine how much worse it would be if, like these pilots, it was a new system you weren't used to!)

so they boarded their passengers and set off from montreal with the intention of flying to edmonton. and that's when things all went terribly wrong.

pictured: the intended and my interpretation of the actual flight.

all this set up leads to the actual flight, which is almost boring in summary: while high up in the sky, the plane suddenly ran out of fuel. this is bad. we do not want this to happen. the pilots had no idea what was happening at first, but i mean: it was pretty obvious. there's no fuel. no engines. no power. you're 30,000 feet in the air in a 64 ton machine and gravity is going hey girllll heyyyy.

but the thing is, airplanes are really cool. like, this is what got me so interested in these plane crashes and accidents: airplanes are awesome. because first of all: just because you weigh as much as a building and are thousands and thousands of meters in the air? doesn't mean the airplane just falls. hell no! without power, an airplane will still stay in the air, losing altitude, sure, but gliding fairly safely and manageably. this doesn't mean you're safe, but: when air canada 143 lost all power, it still had time and options. it also had... the RAT.

the Ram Air Turbine, or the RAT, is an amazing fucking guy. if an airplane loses power? a hatch pops open, and a little propeller drops down automatically. he's wind powered, and he will provide just enough backup power to keep the most critical systems online, even without fuel or engines or god. we LOVE the rat. and the rat leapt into action here, providing the pilots with enough basic systems to keep going.

this doesn't mean that air canada is out of the woods. landing without power is not easy! the trick to landing an airplane is doing it at a nice shallow angle and low speed, which involves things like "doing nice steady turns to line up with a runway" (no time, we're falling steadily), "using engines to get our speed right" (what engines), "getting to the correct altitude and speed to touch down gently" (we have NO POWER we can't go "oopsie too low" and pull up and adjust). if a plane loses too much speed, it WILL fall out of the sky (a stall) because the aerodynamics stop working. if it's going too fast, you're not landing, you're diving cockpit first into the ground. without power, you can turn, but turns will reduce speed. you can't level off or go back up. you are Going In A Downward Direction. the trick is figuring out how fast and how far and aiming at a runway.

this is also where ATC comes in! we love air traffic controllers!! air canada called a mayday, and ATC leapt into action. their job becomes to Get Them What They Need. air canada wants to go anywhere in canada? atc will move everyone out of the way and get them any runway in the northern hemisphere. when this happened, air canada 143 was near winnipeg, which was their initial goal: this IS going to be a crash landing, and the nearer they can be to emergency services, the better. however, the first officer was doing Good Math, calculating their rate of decent vs distance flown, and soon realized that even though they could literally see winnipeg from the windows, they just weren't going to make it. they were falling too fast.

enter: GIMLI. the first officer had actually trained there during his air force days; it's a former base with two runways. it wasn't ideal, because ATC had no information on it and it lacked instruments and equipment (normally, for example, airports will have locator beams and so on to help an aircraft lock on to the runway at the Correct Safe Angle), but... better than a field or lake. one of the dangers of this type of no engine landing is actually being non-committal: waiting too long to make a decision, trying to maximize time in the air rather than land. this makes sense! it's probably pretty human instinct! prolong that crash as long as possible! but it's much, much better to simply Commit and Prepare and Go For It. and that's exactly what air canada now did.

they told ATC they're going to gimli and made the turn. the cabin crew was meanwhile preparing the passengers for a crash landing.

the crazy thing about plane crashes is, actually, that they are very survivable. don't get me wrong: they're bad. people die. but the number of worst case scenarios where dozens of people still, somehow, survive? shockingly high. of course, you don't want ANYONE to die. i would be terrified if it was me. but cabin crew had to know it would probably be... well, not okay. but that if they got everyone prepared and braced, people were going to make it out. people were going to survive this. possibly most of them. possibly all of them.

as the plane approached gimli, problem #87 came up: they were still too fucking fast. they're gliding down! they can't stop! normally, a plane would simply slow down with flaps, or maybe do a couple of big circles before reorienting themselves towards the runway to lose some speed and altitude, but they don't have time -- or altitude. and that's where the theme song KICKS IN

here are reasons you DO NOT DRIFT airplanes, by the way. it can fuck up your engines: engines work in part by taking IN air, so flying at a Drifting Angle means that's all wrong. the aerodynamics are wrong. you're losing speed VERY fast. you can get OUT of the drift, but now your engines are fucked. on the other hand, this plane effectively HAS no engines, but... there's a reason people don't drift planes, okay.

another plot twist: gimli air force base was no more. the runways were still there... but it had been turned into a drag strip, ironically enough. and it was family day! picture this. you're a nice canadian racing fan in 1983, at the strip with your family, cooking hotdogs and poutine on a grill. and a fucking 737 APPEARS OUT OF NOWHERE in front of you. because that is exactly what happened. there were KIDS. on BIKES. with a PLANE HEADING RIGHT TOWARDS THEM. in the mayday episode, the kids tried to outrace the plane in a panic: in the pilot's telling, the kids simply froze in fear.

by the time the pilots realized the runway was occupied, it was way too late to turn back. they landed. in a twist of bad luck that turned into good: without power, they had to manually release their landing gear.... and the nose gear didn't lock. this turned out to be a weirdly good thing: without nose gear, the plane's nose hit the runway and acted as one hell of a brake in ITSELF, grinding on the asphalt as the plane barreled down at high speed. the pilot also intentionally steered the plane into the rail in the middle of the runway, trying to slow the plane even more. and... it worked! the plane came to a stop. everyone was fine. even the kids on bikes.

all this friction caused a small fire in the nose, and so the pilots called for an immediate evacuation to be safe. this caused a bit of an issue: because the nose was on the ground, the butt of the plane was higher than usual, and the back slides were basically just vertical drops. a couple people got mildly hurt using them, as you'd expect.

meanwhile, the drag strip folks were rushing over with fire extinguishers and the like, and the small fire was easily contained (note: do not fuck with burning airplanes. this one had no fuel so COULD be contained). by the time ATC got emergency services to gimli, everyone was safe, ankles were being iced, and presumably everyone was eating hot dogs.

the airplane itself had some minor damage (from when the nose acted as a brake), but was largely intact: it was patched up, refuelled, and took off from gimli a while later, where it flew for another 20 years before retiring of old age.

and that is the story of the Gimli Glider: that time a pilot drifted his plane so hard that he saved the lives of everyone on his plane.

all 69 of them 😎